


Snow Day

by kaijuboyy



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Decepticons being Decepticons, Gen, Is this romantic?, Krok (cameo), One Shot, POV: Fulcrum, Snowball Fight, Well they try to have one anyway, not exactly but well. you know, scavengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28493376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijuboyy/pseuds/kaijuboyy
Summary: The WAP ends up on a cold and snowy planet, and the Scavengers have to try and make their own fun. When Fulcrum starts withdrawing, as per usual, Misfire absolutely has to try and get him out and having fun. It doesn't exactly work out like he planned, but if they're having a good time together, it's a win in his books
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Secret Solenoid '20-'21





	Snow Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Random_Kido](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_Kido/gifts).



Fulcrum usually isn’t the type to get _too_ rowdy. It’s a little necessary, with being a Decepticon, and all. One joke that’s a little too funny, and all of a sudden a triple-changer has slammed your optic plate directly into the bar in the throes of his laughter.

Or one joke that’s a little too tasteless, and buildings are being razed.

You know, the usual.

Even now that he’s with the Scavengers, feeling more  _belonging_ than he has in as long as he can remember, he shies away from the group a little bit. Don’t get him wrong, he has fun when he’s with them. He even seeks them out, curling up against Grimlock at night, kicking his feet up with Crankcase to discuss everything wrong with the world, and even goading Spinister into games that aren’t exactly fun for anyone.

But when they all get to celebrating, he tends to slip away before too long. As much as he’d die for his band of misfits, Misfire happens to be massive in comparison to him. Spinister’s rotor-happy, trigger-happy outlook is only funny until he’s had a few too many energon concoctions. And Krok-- well, Krok is the best commanding officer he’s ever known. But part of him still cringes away from him out of habit.

For all the jokes about Prime secretly being a brute behind closed doors, Fulcrum privately thinks that the Autobots got it right, with the whole lack-of-beating-subordinates thing.

It isn’t exactly _celebrating_ when it’s more like _frantically trying to keep madness from setting in on this frozen fragging planet_ , but the fact of the matter is, there’s a lot of howling and back-slapping going on, and Krok might be small but he’s practically immovable. Despite Fulcrum’s admittedly amazing chin, he’s not really built like Krok. Or any of the rest.

So he’s been fighting the chill by sneaking into the back rooms of this petro-rabbit-warren of an abandoned base, and using his terraforming project manager skills to rifle through anything electronic he can find.

Some might call it scavenging.

That’s where he is, music files playing loudly in his processor as he sub-vocalizes and fiddles his way through a box of defunct data-disks.

And Misfire kicks open the door.

It’s meant to scare him, clearly, but he could hear Misfire’s pedes from down the hall. And anyway, Krok had pinged him twice on the open channel asking where he was, and Misfire had given a location ping from not very far away. So Fulcrum just says, “Hullo, Misfire,” without turning around. There’s a very long, frightened silence. “That’s right,” he adds. “Optics. In the plating on my back. Spinister put them in, good mech.”

More spooked silence, as he stifles his giggles, until two broad fingers poke him right between semi-armoured plating. He shrieks out loud, spinning only to see a grinning Misfire right in front of him.

“Did I get ya in the _optics_ ,” Misfire asks, and then, before he can answer it, “I’m not dumb, pinhead, do I look like Spinny to you? He’s crazy enough to do that, but you aren’t crazy enough to let him. What are you doing in here?”

Fulcrum draws himself up like he’s going to answer, but doesn’t really bother formulating the words.

“Look, mech, this isn’t right,” Misfire says, almost pleadingly. “You’ve been hiding in here ever since Krok told us we were out- _out_ of fuel.”

“That’s _not_ true,” Fulcrum interrupts. “We’ve seen each other every night, or what passes for night, here. We went Crankcase-baiting just not too long ago. And we played shoot-shoot-bang-bang! What do you _want_ from me?”

“I want you to have a snowball fight with me,” Misfire says smugly.

That actually makes Fulcrum pause. “A snowball fight,” he says, looking up at the jet. “You-- _why_?”

“Saw it on one of your freaky squishy tapes,” Misfire says, and pokes him again. “Looked fun. We don’t hardly get snow where we’re stationed, and you can’t exactly have an acid rain fight. Crankcase laughed at me, and Spinister didn’t understand. I’m not dumb enough to ask Krok. If you don’t, I’m going to sit here and watch you work.”

It’s an effective threat. The options are really snowball fight, or try to work while Misfire talks constantly for what feels like decacycles. And he _likes_ Misfire, so he can only imagine what the mech’s previous units went through.

And it really is his fault, if Misfire picked the idea up from one of the data slugs he threw into the common area for the lads to pick over.

Fulcrum sighs. “Okay, you know what? I’ll do it. I will. On one condition.”

Misfire cocks his head curiously.

“No, and I mean _no,_ snow airdrops.”

* * *

Misfire accepts the terms with only a modicum of grumbling, which, from him, is the equivalent of boundless generosity. Fulcrum repays it by packing up his pried-apart hardware as fast as he can, and trailing him to the front door of the base. Or what passes for one, when they’d blasted their way inside.

“We have to build forts,” he says over short-range comms, already in project manager mode.

It only makes sense; what’s the point of fighting without cover? Even in a two-mech war…

Misfire happily bolts over to a pile of snow, from which he glares possessively over at Fulcrum. He raises his hands in surrender-- if Misfire wants _that_ snow, specifically, he won’t argue. It’s all the same to him.

He hasn’t had much experience with snow, at all. Even less than everyone else. He knows he’s much, much younger, but--

Well, this was actually his first time seeing snow. When they’d landed. He’d been a bit shocked, but he’s heard of it in _theory_ , and now he’s practically an old hand at it. Besides, he doesn’t want to look like a fragging newspark in front of Misfire.

Building a fort seems like something he can do. He starts by crouching in the deep, fluffy snow, and packing it down as much as he can. His smaller hands aren’t great for tamping, but he reassures himself by way of thinking about his superior snowballs .

Time clicks on that way, in a companionable sort of distance, before Fulcrum looks up from the base of his base. “Misfire,” he calls, and then, again, over comms, “Hey, Misfire!”

The other mech looks up from his own fort. “What’s up?”

“Throw a snowball at me,” Fulcrum offers, standing up and holding out his arms. “Do it. Right now.”

“Why?” Misfire asks, but he’s already grinning. Fulcrum knows good and well that he’s not going to pass up the opportunity. He watches patiently as Misfire packs the snow into a vaguely-spherical shape, and then doesn’t even bother to flinch.

The wind-up is perfect, the snowball sublime, and the throw goes wildly over his left shoulder, slinging into the trees behind him.

“Oh, _no_ ,” Misfire says, shoulders slumping.

Pits, Fulcrum should have thought of this earlier. “Try again!” he offers, a little disappointed on Misfire’s behalf.

Another wind-up, and another throw. This time, he can see Misfire’s attention wane at a movement in the trees, and the snowball hits the ground right in front of him. Right in front of _Misfire_ , not Fulcrum.

The other mech sits down with a huff, and Fulcrum winces before trotting over.

“You might have hit me if we were on the same team,” he teases, and regrets it when Misfire’s expression sours all the more. Not in the mood for jokes, then? That’s a bad sign.

“I was so excited, Crumbs,” he says, not even bothering to pretend to be as disaffected as the ‘Cons he pretends not to idolize. “I thought it would be fun. Well. Sorry if you got excited, too.”

Fulcrum feels an odd sense of disappointment, but not really because he was looking forward to being hit with snow. Poor Misfire.

“Hey!” he suggests after a near-silent moment (Misfire’s still muttering in sub-voc, of course). “We can try again with the rest of the team! You and I can build a fort together, and it can be us against Spinny and Grimlock. One-on-one wouldn’t be fun, anyway.”

Misfire perks up immediately, looking over at him. “You think Grimsy would play?” he asks.

Fulcrum isn’t sure how, or if, that’ll work, but-- “Sure, why not,” he says, and claps Misfire on his broad shoulder. “It’ll be fun. We’ll have the best fort, they won’t stand a chance.”

“Alright!” Misfire cheers, broad grin spreading over his faceplates. He’s already back in business, and Fulcrum can’t help his own smile. “Yeah, who could build a better fort than us?”

“No one,” Fulcrum agrees. After all, there’s no better team than a hyperactive fighter jet and a former-project-manager. That’s basically Starscream and Soundwave! Well, kind of…

Chattering excitedly over comms-- both him and Misfire, of course, he’s well in this now-- they get to building. Misfire’s got a good start, he thinks, snow packed firmly, and he compliments the other mech on it. That gets him a clap on the shoulder and a pulse of happiness over EM.

Well, maybe people should compliment Misfire a little more.

Since they’re turning it into a two-mech base, it has to be a bit bigger. They agree to split up, Fulcrum crouched to pack more snow for the base of the base, Misfire building up the existing levels. Misfire’s going to get snow in the optics if he doesn’t, poor, tall slagger.

Fulcrum’s rather cold, down here, but he can put up with it. Better than extreme heat. He just focuses on adding the packed snow to the existing base. Tamp, add, smooth, repeat.

He isn’t sure what Misfire’s doing up there until his comms buzz again. “Can I add spikes?” the other mech asks, oddly contemplative.

“Can you add spikes,” Fulcrum repeats. “Well, no… not of snow, Misfire. But…”

With application of a little heat and quite a few false starts, they manage to come up with some frightening looking ice-spikes.

“If we had molds, we could freeze anything!” Misfire starts, and then starts listing off things he’d like to have ice shaped into.

Fulcrum nods along, half-listening. It makes pleasant background noise, and he can add on when there’s a particularly interesting one. Now that Misfire’s onto decorating, he thinks he’d better hurry up with the boring bits.

Soon enough, it seems almost big enough for the two of them. He motions Misfire to crouch, and they both peer cautiously over the top of their fort.

“Misfire?” he asks, after a moment. “How are you going to throw around the spikes?”

Misfire shrugs, and stands up to his full height to mime a snowball toss.

“Misfire,” he asks, again, “ _What’s the point of the fragging cover, then?”_

As he’s standing up, too, Misfire’s engine growls playfully, and he turns to shove Fulcrum backwards. It’s not particularly hard, but he’s moving, and the ground is wet and footing is hard to come by.

Instead of stumbling, Fulcrum falls flat on his back. And directly into the deep, soft snow.

It doesn’t hurt, per say, but he’s so thrown for a minute that he doesn’t move. On his back, as opposed to crouching, he’s completely surrounded by snow. Everything’s so cold and wet, and as he flails his way upright, there’s an uncomfortable sort of resistance.

When he manages to sit up, he notices that Misfire is panicking.

“Primus, Primus, Crumbs, are you alright?” he asks, blurting the words out. “You looked half-deactivated! Do I need to get Spinny? Do I need to get _Krok?_ ”

Fulcrum isn’t injured, he was just shocked. But of course Misfire doesn’t know that he’s hardly ever seen snow, and never gone swimming in it. He’d wanted to keep that under wraps, so, really it’s his own fault that poor Misfire is having a glitch-fit over it.

He’s no Autobot, though. He just extends a shaky hand, and when Misfire reaches out to take it, to pull him upright, he slides out his pede, kicking Misfire’s ankle joint.

It wouldn’t’ve worked on anyone else his size, but poor Misfire is off-guard, leaning forward, unbalanced. And Fulcrum has a little bit of experience with taking down warframes and running.

Misfire falls face-first into the snow right next to him, sending up a huge _puff_ of white powder.

And Fulcrum doesn’t run. He just howls with laughter.

“I hate you,” Misfire says, over comms. It wouldn’t be audible if he’d tried to vocalize it. “Fulcrum, I hate you. I was trying to help!”

“You knocked me down in the first place!” Fulcrum argues, still laughing. Despite the shock and anger, bubbling up-- they’re _both_ Decepticons, after all-- all he can feel from Misfire is affection and amusement. His EM field is a field day for teasing, but Fulcrum holds back. Primus knows what the other mech feels in his.

Misfire growls, pulling his face up from the snow, and grabs Fulcrum’s arm in one large hand. When _he_ pulls Fulcrum, they roll, and immediately it turns into a tussle.

Fulcrum rubs snow in his face, Misfire goes for his optics in retaliation, Fulcrum laughs when the larger mech is rebuffed by his goggles and tries to knee him somewhere sensitive.

It doesn’t work, seeing as how Misfire is practically on top of him. So there’s only one thing to do, really. Fulcrum tenses up, ready to shift the weight. Misfire sees it coming, but just laughs and lets him. They roll again, scrambling for position and best access to snow.

If he had any sense, Fulcrum would be scared. This is a massive warframe with a penchant for shooting his comrades! But. This is also Misfire, who lets him lean into him when they’re watching random data disks in the common room.

He doesn’t bother running, or going for a weapon at all, just keeps laughing and tussling and letting Misfire try and fail to get snow around his goggles.

Neither of them realize how far they’ve moved, wrestling, until there’s a loud, metallic _clunk_ and a “Scrap!” from Misfire. When Fulcrum looks up, he can see that he’d flipped Misfire right into the wall of the base.

They both look back at the fort, half-destroyed from their fighting and a long way from their current position. Misfire is the first to give into the laughter, flopping back down on top of Fulcrum with a loud clanging sound. And seeing as it was his fort, it’s like it gives Fulcrum permission to laugh, too.

Once they start, they can’t stop, letting the howls take over as they look back at their wasted cycle. But even with his past project manager programming, Fulcrum can’t quite see it as a waste.

Part of him thinks he could stay there laughing with Misfire until Megatron himself came for them. The only thing that could make it a little better would be the rest of the crew. He’s okay with this, though.

But when the strangely-tinted sunlight dims, and then gets blotted out almost entirely, Fulcrum almost wishes for disaster. Maybe the suns are burning out at the same time. Or maybe the Autobot fleet is here to destroy them personally.

“Do I,” Krok says, sounding extremely long-suffering, “Want to know?”

Fulcrum tries to tug his arm out from under Misfire and fails completely. He probably would have preferred the Autobots.

“No, I don’t,” Krok decides, and moves on swiftly. “If you two idiots start rusting, don’t bother going to Spinister. I’ll have him dismantle you for parts. And he’ll do it, too!”

“He will,” Misfire adds, thoughtfully. “I mean, he did it to Flywheels. Primus something something, poor mech.”

Well, they all did it to Flywheels, but Fulcrum just nods solemnly. The moment of silence carries them until the sounds of Krok’s pedes are swallowed up by their temporary base.

“We should probably get out of the snow,” Fulcrum offers. “You know, before we _do_ rust. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

Misfire sighs. “No, not a good idea. But since when do we have those?” His optics gleam a bit brighter when he looks down at Fulcrum, despite his tone. “This was worth it, though, loser. Told ya it was worth getting out of the nerd cage.”

Fulcrum sighs, too, but doesn’t bother to hide his smile, or the affectionate surge in his EM fields. He’s lucky, though, because Misfire doesn’t call him on it.

Misfire’s lucky too, because if he had, Fulcrum would have rubbed his helm in the snow for it.

* * *

By the time they’ve got the fire built up, the cold’s starting to set in. At least, for Fulcrum it is. He can’t tell what Misfire’s feeling, if anything, and the jet’s size could go either way for that kind of thing.

“Personal space, pinhead,” Misfire tells him, with a nudge from his oversized arm.

Fulcrum  clenches his fists, embarrassed to be caught out. “We’re trying to warm up, aren’t we?” he asks. “It’s called conserving heat,  _pinhead_ , and if I’m not wrong, it’s working. Whatever this room used to be, it’s  _big_ , and if you want to vent heat into the air until you shut down, be my guest. I’d rather share my heat with you, though.”

Misfire hums thoughtfully, though Primus knows what’s actually running through his processors right now. “Conserving heat,” he says, as though he’s sounding out the words. “So we’ll be out of here faster?”

“Out of _here_ ,” Fulcrum agrees. “No promises for the planet, though. Krok said we need a lot more fuel, though.”

“Good! The only thing worse than this boring fragging planet is having to sit still like this.”

Fulcrum stares into the fire, shaking his head a little. “If you want to transform and fly through the halls, be my guest. Krok will kill you, but we  _could_ use a little entertainment.”

Misfire nudges him again, but doesn’t get up. “Nah, I’m good here, ‘Crumbs. If I’m stuck warming up, at least I have good company.”

There are a lot of things that Fulcrum could say. Like ‘what about personal space’, or ‘who’s the loser now’ or countless other biting remarks.

But he’s busy reaching up to tap the snow off his goggles, and if it has the consequence of hiding his wobbly, tentative smile, well, Misfire doesn’t have to know that.

**Author's Note:**

> Winter-themed and a bit festive! This was fun to write, and I hope you like it, @random-kido! Thanks for the awesome prompt, and I hope you don't mind my bits of creative liberty.


End file.
